Tag Archives: wapo

The civilized Washington Post wades into the controversy now five years in the making. Just who does this black lady think she is, with her ass?

The latest public rant against Michelle Obama’s effort to promote low-calorie school lunches was recently caught on tape in Alabama — the usual protest against the federal government meddling in local business. And then it quickly found its way around to the first lady’s posterior.

“Fat butt Michelle Obama,” said Bob Grisham, a high school football coach who was surreptitiously recorded by one of his students. “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight.”

I guess this is what the antique media are good for. Dragging polite non-computer-owning society into a current “controversy.”

Grisham, who was suspended Monday, is neither the first nor the most high-profile person to feel moved to comment on the first lady’s physique. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly called her Michelle “My Butt” Obama. And Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican, issued an apology after he was caught commenting on her “large posterior.” (Grisham has also said he misspoke.)

So racism is back. That’s too bad. Doing what it does all over again. And all the First Lady wants is fat fuck country to give up their dreams of living like sweaty offensive linemen before dying in their forties. What a bitch.

Update: Althouse delves in with serious questions here. Who would talk about the First Lady’s ass? Very pathetic. Eventually Ann could really use a second post to flesh out her full criticism of the WaPo for featuring something so beneath Ann Althouse. Did you know that it was also called Michelle’s ‘posterior’ or ‘derriere’? It’s weird, hurry hie post number three.

Comment:

Shouting Thomas said…

Get rid of Black History Month and I’ll quit making fun of Michelle’s fat ass.

I’ve been fed up for some time with the force fed veneration of blacks.

After some violent ‘left-wing’ asshole shoots a guard at the Family Research Council, brave Dana Milbank thinks everything over. He cuts through the reeds of confusion and partisanship (just listen to us: “He’s one of ours! Let him go!”), and he issues as surprisingly sage a tract as any villager ever wrote:

The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

You see where this is going.

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

Let’s not play around. Okay?

1.) It’s okay to “hate” a hate group. Grow up, Dana.

2.) The Family Research Council is a hate group. They may advocate on a “full range” of issues, but their bread and butter, the advocacy that garners them the most kudos, attention and cash, is their raving, lying hatred for gay American men and women. They are nasty, immoral homophobes.

How do we know this? The FRC’s own words and deeds. But let’s not gloss over the charge (as Dana does), let’s instead put it to a test. Dana and the SPLC disagree, but who should win the argument? Has the “think tank” earned the hate group designation? Here’s the SPLC’s argument:

In Its Own Words

“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
— Robert Knight, FRC director of cultural studies, and Frank York, 1999

“One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”
-1999 FRC pamphlet, Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex with Boys.

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

They add:

Other anti-gay propagandists at the FRC include Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies, who joined the organization in 2001. Sprigg authored a 2010 brochure touting “The Top Ten Myths about Homosexuality.” In the brochure, Sprigg claimed that ex-gay therapy works, that sexual orientation can change, that gay people are mentally ill simply because homosexuality makes them that way, and that, “Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is many times more common than consensual sex between adult men, and most of those engaging in such molestation identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” . .

In March 2008, Sprigg responded to a question about uniting gay partners during immigration by saying, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than import them.” He later apologized, but in February 2009, he told Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied.

Okay. Now let’s see what the other side has to say. Dana?

The Family Research Council [is] a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

Who wins the argument? The SPLC calls the FRC a hate group for routinely saying homosexuals are mentally ill, conspiracists, pedophiles, and asking they be criminalized and exported from the country. Dana calls the FRC “mainstream” for what peculiar reason, again? Because James Dobson and Gary Bauer are familiar to him.

It’s these lazy calculations that render the villagers pathetic. They learned long ago that ethics present a serious impediment to maintaining a lucrative beat within the dreamy beltway. Somehow the practical result isn’t a soul-free mercenary, it’s a sophisticated journalist who can’t, golly god knows why, construct the flimsiest of arguments.

It would be one thing to ply your gutless profession and manage to cash the paychecks without whining. But when you see fit to lecture the rest of us about the dangerous rhetoric of morality (these people are immoral, Dana), you are one stupid asshole.

What can you say of the debate(?) over evolution when WaPo’s education columnist Jay Mathews supports teaching intelligent design in Science classes?

Santorum’s good but hated education idea
Jay Mathews | Hiatt’s House of Monkeys

I won’t say who is getting my vote for president. But I confess a nonpartisan desire that former senator Rick Santorum (R) remain in the race long enough to focus attention on an intriguing, if deeply controversial, educational issue.

Wapo reader: “A controversial issue, you say? How fascinating. I am a smart and reasonable man. Therefore I will say that I am interested, columnist Mathews. Please good sir, do go on.”

So hang on, Senator. Show a little courage and you could spark new interest in one of the few causes we share: encouraging high school discussion of alternatives to evolutionary theory.

Teaching all sides of the evolution issue is supported in opinion polls.

“Evolution you say? Sounds terribly complicated. But, yes, let’s be reasonable and teach all sides of the controversy. What could be the harm?” Thanks Jay, you’ve performed a spineless and invaluable service.

But – oh no – now hear Science man. Shrill and unceasing he will un-intrigue and de-fascinate everything in a depressing WaPo-free manner…

Friends, I’m sorry to say there already exists a terrific place where we scientists squirrel away the many sides of the evolution ‘debate.’ Shocking, isn’t it? You may find the many many arguments in a school of thought called . . ‘Evolution.’ What? No kidding! The whole thing came out of a pile of arguments.

Think of it as a 152 year-long Science thread. Everyone who isn’t trolling agrees that the argument currently stands: Life on Earth evolved from earlier, less complicated forms by way of natural selection operating in and upon environmental change and genetic variation, blah blah.

How did you think scientists operate, incidentally? By way of conspiracy? Do you think a whole bunch of the older ones got together and planned the Theory of Evolution? As if it were a product, like the Chevy Volt? That’s a fine looking car, Jay Matthews says, but what if I want a four door? Reasonable people want alternatives.

When something is the product of every alternative being argued and tested across a century and a half, there are no alternatives. All the currently possible ‘sides’ have been exhausted. That’s how you build a great theory. Evolution is one of the greatest in history.

If you want to know how science guys like me feel when a WaPo columnist starts considering Martian Deconstruction for the curriculum, read this:

It is important to note that Santorum and I have different reasons for wanting high schools to allow discussion of intelligent design — the notion that some supernatural force (not necessarily God) brought life to earth.

Danger! Science is perfectly equipped to deal with us and our world. Because we exist. Science can never address the non-rational, non-existent world. We can’t tell you how often a unicorn farts in the 23rd dimension. No one knows who won the lemonade parabola rodeo. Who knows what sort of role Superman played in evolution? If there’s no evidence for it, why should science bother with it? Let’s not argue about peri-weather phenomena. Let’s not build skyscrapers from gestures.

The minute you drag fake things into the reality-obsessed argument, chaos ensues. The attempt to bring creationism into the world of science is an attempt to destroy science. I hope I made that clear. Also:

It was hard for me to become interested in classroom explanations of natural selection when I was a student. Introducing a contrary theory like intelligent design and having students discuss its differences from Darwinism would enliven the class.

Where are the anti-Semites of Occupy Wall Street?
By Richard Cohen, Published: October 24

Reckless Jew that I am, I muscled my way into the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan despite multiple reports of virulent and conceivably lethal anti-Semitism. Projecting an unvarnished Semitism, I circled the place, encountering nothing and no one to suggest bigotry — not a sign, not a book and not even the guy who some weeks ago held up a placard with the instruction to Google the phrase “Zionists control Wall St.” Google “nut case” instead.

Gee. Hard to believe.

This was my second visit to the Occupy Wall Street site and the second time my keen reporter’s eye has failed to detect even a hint of the anti-Semitism that had been trumpeted by certain right-wing Web sites and bloggers, most prominently Bill Kristol . .

Kristol’s cri de wolf (a French term of my own invention) was taken up by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post’s conservative blogger, who noted the Kristol group’s “eye-popping ad.” Citing an article from Israel Today that linked a single statement by someone named Patricia McAllister in Los Angeles with some vitriol on the American Nazi Party’s Web site and a reference to the editor of Adbusters, she fashioned a veritable pogrom out of pretty close to thin air and demanded, “Where is the outrage?” I have a better question: Where are the anti-Semites?

How about: where are the Semites? Down at the protest. They’re just too young and too busy to bother with haggard Jennifer Rubin’s dogshit.

Don’t you just love the Washington Post? No? C’mon– what about their editorial board? How about those guys? Aren’t you a fan? Ahh, yes, I see your face lighting up.

Ten years after Sept. 11: The gains outweigh the mistakes
By Editorial, Published: September 9

ON THE 10TH anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom seems to be evolving from “We will be hit again” to “Osama bin Laden won by provoking us into a decade of overreaction.”

The feeling is understandable but incorrect, and it would be dangerous if it took hold. Yes, the nation made big mistakes over the past decade. When has America ever geared up without excess and error? But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon alerted Americans to genuine dangers that only a relative few had previously noticed. We have lived safely for the decade since not because we misread those dangers but because we responded to them in a manner in which, on balance, Americans can take pride . .

Soul palm. Do you “take pride” in 100,000 bodies littered across Iraq? 20 million bones? You’re good with that? I didn’t think so. You can stuff this ‘opinion’ in a sewer.

As long as we’re about to spend gazillions to stimulate the economy, I’d like to suggest we throw in another $53.5 million for a cause dear to all business journalists: economic literacy. And what better place to start than right here in Washington.

[...]

“This is not a stimulus plan, it’s a spending plan,” Nebraska’s freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, “won’t create the promised jobs. It won’t activate our economy.”

Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services — a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.

Meanwhile, Nebraska’s other senator, Ben Nelson (D), was heading up a centrist group that was determined to cut $100 billion from the stimulus bill. Among his targets: $1.1 billion for health-care research into what is cost-effective and what is not. An aide explained that, in the senator’s opinion, there is “some spending that was more stimulative than other kinds of spending.”

Oh really? I’m sure they’d love to have a presentation on that at the next meeting of the American Economic Association. Maybe the senator could use that opportunity to explain why a dollar spent by the government, or government contractor, to hire doctors, statisticians and software programmers is less stimulative than a dollar spent on hiring civil engineers and bulldozer operators and guys waving orange flags to build highways, which is what the senator says he prefers.

And then there is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), complaining in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that of the 3 million jobs that the stimulus package might create or save, one in five will be government jobs, as if there is something inherently inferior or unsatisfactory about that. (Note to Coburn’s political director: One in five workers in Oklahoma is employed by government.)

In the next day’s Journal, Coburn won additional support for his theory that public-sector employment and output is less worthy than private-sector output from columnist Daniel Henninger. Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and — get this! — $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“What is most striking is how much ‘stimulus’ money is being spent on the government’s own infrastructure,” wrote Henninger. “This bill isn’t economic stimulus. It’s self-stimulus.”

Actually, what’s striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.